Les Landes hosted an emphatic Mid-summer Evening Meeting

A PERFECT midsummer evening with the promise of good racing drew a bank-holiday sized crowd to CoinShares Les Landes last Friday for the second of three evening meetings.

And the promise was fulfilled with five competitive races and some exciting finishes. It was particularly enjoyable for a group of poor sexy farmers, members of the owners’ syndicate of that name who enjoyed a few days in Jersey prior to watching their horses competing for the first time at Les Landes.

The Poor Sexy Farmers Club owned three of the four horse raiding party from Martin Dunne’s Newmarket stable, racing here for the first time. Two of them won, to the obvious joy of the owners.

Their third runner, competing for the evening’s main prize, the Quilter Cheviot International Summer Trophy, was the only one to finish out of the money.

The race was won by Resilient Power, given a well-judged ride by Alice Bond, the combination having just enough in reserve to hold the strong late finish of Cueros under Victoria Malzard, who was a detached last for most of the race. Birkie Boy ran well to be third under Fern O’Brien, who was riding here for the first time.

A number of competitive races gave punters a number of high-odds winners. Picture: GEORGE MARRIOTT

The daughter of leading trainer Fergal O’Brien, Fern enjoyed her first experience of Jersey and one hopes she might return, possibly with some of her father’s horses. Resilient Power was not winning out of turn having been second on his last three outings.

Unusually, the evening started with a competitive five-furlong sprint sponsored by La Verte Rue Associates, aka Mr and Mrs Anthony Taylor, who are among local racing’s most ardent supporters.

It was won by Gemcutter ridden by Fred Tett, who held the challenge of Martin Dunne’s first Jersey runner Lady In Havana.

The Autism Jersey Stakes over seven furlongs experienced a delayed start when Bank On Kent took off facing away from the start and completed a full circuit the wrong way round before rejoining the other runners.

When the starter dropped his flag Bank On Kent went straight to the front and led almost all the way, only to be caught by No Gain, the favourite, who provided the Poor Sexy Farmers Club with their first win of the evening.

Tyler Heard was the winning jockey and Alice Bond was on the brave runner up who held second spot from St Ouen and Raul Da Silva by a head.

The Union Bancaire Privee Handicap saw last year’s Jersey Derby winner Roi Du Monde defy top weight with assistance from the saddle of Fred Tett, completing a double.

He was closely matched with Between The Covers, who was a good second with Flashy Apache – trying the trip for the first time – third.

The programme closed with the Autism Jersey Marathon. All Cost, representing Michael Dunne and the Poor Sexy Farmers Club, scored a comfortable victory under Tyler Heard, completing a double, mastering the front running Allegro Jete in the last furlong and going five lengths clear.

The return of runners from the UK is welcomed, but the performances of Michael Dunne’s runners left locals scratching their heads.

Horses from the UK run here under their BHA rating. Local horses race against each other time after time and winners, not unreasonably, are reassessed upwards by the official handicapper.

A prolific local performer will therefore move up the ratings despite not having raced against UK raiders. In other words, there is no benchmarking when comparing UK form with local performances.

It is arguable that this leaves locally trained horses at a disadvantage when meeting horses from overseas. There may be a couple of solutions to this issue for the local handicapper to consider.

One example is to be found in the fact that the BHA handicapper takes a different view of the merits of Irish runners in the UK from the Irish handicapper and vice versa. The Jersey handicapper could do likewise with UK raiders to Jersey.

Perhaps a simpler alternative is to reduce all locally trained horses’ ratings by, say, 5lb across the board. This would not disadvantage locally trained horses racing against each other, but may serve to level up the playing field with UK raiders.

As ever the grooms of all Friday’s runners were acknowledged through the best-turned-out rewards: Friday’s winners were the grooms of Lady In Havana, Casaruan, Juniper’s Dream, Between The Covers and Just Jersey each wins £100.

Among notable guests at Les Landes on Friday were former trainer Harry Dunlop whose late father John was a trainer of innumerable top-level successes and whose brother Ed is still training with success.

Former top jockey Adam Kirby accompanied the Michael Dunne team; the winner of the 2021 Derby on Adayar in addition to a haul of Group 1 races, Adam formally announced his retirement from the saddle earlier this year.

The next meeting is the third and final evening fixture on Friday 11 July.

Les Landes hosted an emphatic Mid-summer Evening Meeting

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